It will be the talking point of the 2010-11 season well into the future for those looking for a simple excuse and easily identifiable rallying point – just like saying the Celtics would have won Game 7 against the Lakers if Perkins hadn’t gotten hurt.

In hindsight, the deal didn’t matter. With or without Perkins, the Celtics were a decrepit old team that reeked of corrosion by the time they came up against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference semifinals, and were bound to decay.

Yes, Boston was outrebounded 202-174 in the series, and while Perkins’ presence would have helped in that regard, his glower would have done little to slow the Heat’s athletic wing players.

So, it’s hard to condemn Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge as the reason the Celtics didn’t get to Promised Land of 18.

He made a gamble that ended up being a wash, but when evaluating the details and motives behind his decision-making, it becomes quite clear that his thought process was way off the mark.

And that shouldn’t be ignored.

The errors in judgment are plentiful, but they start with his evaluation of center Shaquille O’Neal, which is where this whole thing began.

Somewhere along the lines – probably while O’Neal was leading the team to a 33-10 record while Perkins was rehabbing his knee injury – Ainge’s vision became clouded and he lost sight of what O’Neal was.

Instead of viewing him as a 39-year-old bit player capable of the occasional big game, which is what he was trumpeted as upon his arrival, he now saw a player capable of playing heavy minutes on a nightly basis that could be depended upon.

Anyone who follows basketball saw the error in this line of thinking immediately, and it quickly blew up in Ainge’s face as it became clear O’Neal wouldn’t be returning from an Achilles injury anytime soon.

It almost became a running joke each week as coach Doc Rivers would take his place against the wall at the team’s practice facility in Waltham and proclaim that the big man was about a week away from returning.

At first he said so with a steely face, and it was believable. By the end, he’d crack a joke at the absurdity of it all, saying something like, “I saw Shaq come through in house shoes. He looked good. He’ll be back in about a week.”

Part of it, though, was that the team had no other choice after their only reserve wing player, Marquis Daniels, went down with a spine injury that ended his season.

Ainge evaluated the league and correctly determined that Orlando’s Dwight Howard, San Antonio’s Tim Duncan and the Lakers’ Pau Gasol were not the biggest threats in the league. That distinction now belonged to Miami’s LeBron James, Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki and Oklahoma City’s Kevin Durant had taken their place, and to keep up, the team was going to need better perimeter players.

So he rolled the dice and did what he thought he had to do to keep pace.

But Jeff Green wasn’t the answer, and neither was Nenad Krstic.

Green had his moments against Miami, providing shutdown defense on James at times and periods of competence on the offensive end, but those moments were negating by his often-timid play and foolish turnovers.

Krstic, who didn’t play in games three and four, was nothing more than a spare part.

In the long run, Green might become a valuable player for the Celtics. For 2011, on a team with three aging stars in what was likely their last real shot at winning a title barring a lockout shortened season, he was a complete and utter bust.

Much like the decision-making that pulled the trigger on the trade.

Ainge didn’t ruin the Celtics season by any stretch of the imagination, and if the team’s chemistry was so weak that it could be destroyed by the departure of one player, well, they didn’t deserve to win the title, anyways.

But that doesn’t mean that the normally brilliant Ainge should be totally let off the hook. He was lucky to dodge a bullet.